


baby we got chemistry

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Pining, barriss is a chem tutor and a hopeless lesbian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 23:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11816523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ahsoka’s voice seems to have moved a million miles away. Or perhaps it's Barriss who moved, who rose into the air far above the lecture hall, past the stars, beyond the distant galaxies, into a universe where pretty girls knew her name and smiled at her like she held in her hands all the secrets of the cosmos.---aka the one where Barriss is maybe-sorta-kinda falling in love with the girl she's tutoring.





	baby we got chemistry

“I'm going to hand back your quizzes now,” Madame Jocasta says, eyeing the room. “Some of you did excellent,” she announces, tipping her head toward Barriss encouragingly.

Barriss shifts uncomfortably, wishing she wouldn’t. Several people twist in their seats to look at her and she makes a mental note to be absent after the next quiz.

“Others,” Madame Jocasta continues, her gaze falling on a girl in the front row that Barriss doesn't recognize, “did not.” The stares of the group migrate to her and the girl flushes a deep red.

“Now remember, this is only the first assessment of the semester, so if you did rather less well than you'd hoped, there's still plenty of time to improve your marks, _provided_ ,” she stops, and looks back at the girl, who’s cast her gaze determinedly to the ground, “that you make a genuine effort to study smarter, work harder, and do better. Chemistry isn't a subject you can breeze through, but I do have faith that each and every one of you can succeed,” she finishes, not unkindly, and hands the girl her paper.

Barriss recognizes her now: Ahsoka Tano. They live on the same floor, but they've never spoken.

Ahsoka flips her paper over and sighs, lips forming a single, silent _Fuck._

Barriss greets her paper with about equal enthusiasm. When you have barely any friends and spend your whole life studying, good grades are less of an achievement and more of an expectation.

The class starts to trickle out. Barriss gathers up her notes and stows her laptop in her bag, preparing to join the mass exodus as someone taps her shoulder.

“It’s Barriss, right?” A voice behind her says, and there's Ahsoka standing before her, sheepishness written across her posture.

“Uh,” Barriss says, processing through the shock of someone actually knowing her name. One of Ahsoka’s brows furrows slightly, as if starting to regret even approaching her. “Uh, yeah. Yup. That's me, Barriss Offee, ha! It even rhymes …” she trails off, wincing. “And you’re Ahsoka, right?” she says quickly.

Ahsoka nods distractedly, glancing around the room. When the last student leaves, she turns back to Barriss and grabs her hand. “Barriss, _please,_ you’ve got to help me,” she pleads, pressing forward. “Anakin’s going to kill me– I _bombed_ it – my scholarship– oh god, if I lose that _–”_

 _“_ Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Barriss says, gently disentangling her hand and lifting it in a placating gesture. “Start over. What's going on?”

Ahsoka takes a deep breath. “I failed the quiz. _Bad_. Like, had not a single clue what was going on bad.” She scrubs a hand down her face. “I’m only getting more and more behind each day, and if my GPA dips below 3.2, I’ll lose my scholarship, and my brother _will_ kill me.” Seeing Barriss’s shocked look, she clarifies, “Not literally. I don't think.”

“Ahsoka, I'm so sorry,” Barriss says genuinely, if a little confusedly.

Ahsoka's eyes snap back into focus. “So will you help me? _Please?_ ”

“Help you….?”

“Barriss, come on. Everyone sees how Madame Jocasta fawns over you in class, and you’re always done with your labs before I can even light my burner. You're a fucking chemistry god– shut up, you know I'm right,” she says when Barriss starts to protest. “So will you _please_ tutor me?”

“I…” Barriss sputters, her mouth dry. She’s never tutored before, but Ahsoka’s looking up at her with those big desperate eyes, and then her mouth is saying _yes_ , _of course_ before she’s even conscious of it.

Ahsoka’s face splits into a blinding smile. “Thank you, thank you, _thank you!”_ she cries, flinging her arms around Barriss.

Ice seeps through her veins, freezing her to the spot. Ahsoka’s head against her chest. Ahsoka’s arms around her shoulders. Ahsoka’s warmth and exuberance, the first physical contact she's had since the semester started– she's paralyzed. And then just as quickly, Ahsoka’s pulling away, flashing her a grin and making plans to meet at an empty lab Friday afternoon.

Barriss nods, smiles. Ahsoka’s voice seems to have moved a million miles away. Or perhaps it's Barriss who moved, who rose into the air far above the lecture hall, past the stars, beyond the distant galaxies, into a universe where pretty girls knew her name and smiled at her like she held in her hands all the secrets of the cosmos.

\------

“It's no use,” Ahsoka moans, dropping her head into her hands dramatically. “I give up. Limiting reagents and I are doomed to stay enemies.”

“Hey, don't talk like that,” Barriss says, pulling the whiteboard toward her. “Let’s try looking at it from a different angle, okay?”

Ahsoka just grunts into her hands.

Barriss chews on the cap of her marker, considering. Her eyes fall on the crumbs of Ahsoka’s sandwich next to them. “Okay,” she says finally, “think of it like your sandwich.”

Ahsoka perks up at the mention of food, but then seems to remember that she’s supposed to be moping and drops her head back down again. “What about my sandwich?”

“What kind was it?”

“Roast beef.”

“Anything else?”

“Provolone.”

“Ah,” Barriss says. “So, your sandwich is always two slices of bread, one slice of cheese, and three slices of–”

“– _four_ slices.”

“– _four_ slices of roast beef. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“So, say I want to make you some sandwiches,” Barriss begins.

Ahsoka smirks. “Ooh, a domestic girl. Very sexy.”

Barriss’s cheeks grow hot, but she manages to ignore her. “I go shopping at Costco and buy, oh, 10 slices of cheese and 84 slices of meat. But when I get home, I realize I forgot the bread, and I’ve only got 2 pieces left.”

“Okay,” Ahsoka says, “but is there a point to this? I mean, besides making me super hungry again?”

“The _point_ _is_ , how many sandwiches can I make with my 2 slices of bread, 10 pieces of cheese, and 84 slices of meat?”

“One?”

“That's right! Even though we have so much other stuff, we’re _limited_ in the number of sandwiches we can make by the amount of bread we have. So, in this situation, the bread is the limiting reagent and the leftover cheese and meat are the excess reactants.”

“I don't follow.”

Barriss looks at her, a slight panic settling in. She _knew_ she'd be a shitty tutor, and now she’s gone and wasted her and Ahsoka’s time with this dumbass metaphor that obviously didn't help at all, and–

“Like, if you're really making those sandwiches for _me_ , then there's not gonna be _any_ leftover roast beef, just saying,” Ahsoka grins.

Barriss blinks. A joke. Relief courses through her.  Ahsoka was _joking_ , and that meant Barriss _wasn't_ actually a terrible teacher. She suddenly feels like laughing, so she does. “Really? You’re up for 84 slices of beef?”

“Babe, that's just a light snack,” Ahsoka breezes.

(Barriss tries to ignore the rush down her spine when Ahsoka says _babe_. _She doesn't mean anything_ , Barriss reminds herself. _That's just... her personality. Don't read into it. )_

 _“_ Like, 84 pieces of beef is just horse divorce for me,” Ahsoka’s saying.

“Horse…. divorce?” Barriss repeats, not sure she heard correctly.

Ahsoka just stares at her. “...Yeah? Like those little appetizer things?”

They look at each other blankly for a moment. Then Barriss bursts into huge, wracking peals of laughter.

“What?” Ahsoka demands, voice tinged with annoyance.

“It’s …. _hors d'oeuvres_ ,” Barriss manages between gasps, her shoulders shaking.

“Wait. No. Fuck!” Ahsoka nearly yells. “Have I really been pronouncing that wrong my whole fucking life?”

“Horse divorce,” Barriss deadpans to herself, then falls back into heaving laughter.

A part of her finds space to feel self-conscious. She's never laughed like this in front of anyone, never so loud and messy and _exposed_. But then Ahsoka joins in, and that little doubting part is silenced by the screaming, massive voice that's telling her mind to just _shut up_ and enjoy having a friend for once.

(Ahsoka has a cute laugh. Squeaky, like an asthmatic sheep. It's endearing.)

(Straight girls think stuff like that about their friends, too, right?)

“God, I'm a fucking idiot,” Ahsoka wheezes.

Barriss sobers. “Hey. Don’t even joke about that. You’re one of the smartest people I know, alright?”

Ahsoka snorts, her laughter drying up. “Clearly not, or else we wouldn’t be _here_ , would we?” She gestures to the whiteboard and mess of papers littering the table before them.

“Cut the shit, Ahsoka. I’ve looked up your LinkedIn; I know that you’ve been a guest contributor for Huffpost since senior year of high school. And I’ve read your articles—”

“—oh god, no, they’re _so_ embarrassing—”

“—and they’re _really good_. Like, the kind of style you can’t fake.” Dimly, it occurs to her that admitting how much you’ve stalked your new friend online probably isn’t a super smart move. Well, it’s too late now. “So, if chemistry takes a little work at first, so what? We all struggle with things. It doesn’t make you stupid, it just makes you _human_ , so stop always beating up on yourself, okay?”

Heavy silence hangs in the air. Then Ahsoka gives her a small smile. “Okay. I’ll…. try.”

 “Great,” Barriss says, her heart racing slightly. She’s never addressed someone so directly like this. Hell, she’s never even disagreed with someone to their face before. But something about Ahsoka— she’s _different_. Being around her, it makes Barriss want to open up, not fold into herself like she does around everyone else. It makes her want to be loud, to be bold, to do things she’d never otherwise have the courage.

She gets the feeling that if she spent enough time with Ahsoka, she’d become a different person entirely.

She also gets the feeling that she wouldn’t care one bit.

Together, they wade through dozens of problem sets until Ahsoka throws her marker down and pushes away from the table, letting the momentum of the swivel chair carry her in lazy circles.

“I swear to god, if I have to do _one more_ stoichiometry question I’m going to start taking shots of hydrochloric acid,” she announces.

Barriss glances out the window. “It _is_ getting late… let’s just call it a day,” she concedes.

Ahsoka grins. “Barriss, all jokes aside, I can’t thank you enough. I actually _kinda_ sorta know what’s going on now, and for me in chem, that’s pretty fucking impressive. Up here,” she says, holding up her hand.

Barriss high fives it, awkwardly wondering if her hand was too clammy. Then cursing herself for even worrying about that. Why should she care? Why did it matter? What was wrong with her?

As Ahsoka picks up her books and stows them in her bag, Barriss is struck by the abrupt, desperate realization that she doesn’t want her to leave. _Fuck_. Her throat suddenly dry, she grabs a swig of water from her bottle.

“Hey, if you’re not doing anything after this, I was, uh…” her voice fades as Ahsoka’s phone lights up. She catches a glimpse of the name on the notification: Lux Bonteri. Then Ahsoka picks up her phone, texting him back and giggling like Barriss’s mom after she’s had a few too many margaritas.

Barriss’s stomach drops. She has no idea who he is, but if Lux were in the room right now, she’d strangle him with her own two hands.

Ahsoka finally looks up. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

Barriss’s smile fits wrong over her teeth. “Never mind.”

\------

Barriss shifts her weight from her left foot to right foot then left again. Her eyes search every inch of the lab for something to focus on; the bottles under the fume hood, the titrations left to settle overnight, the spectrophotometer that a careless student forgot to turn off. She crosses to it and powers it down, noticing a pile of smudged vials beside it. Good. This, at least, is something she can control. Pulling on gloves and grabbing a stack of lens paper, she sets to work polishing. Then scrubbing the tables. Then organizing the chemical stock room by order of expiration date. Then, _finally_ ,  after exhausting every possible chore and distraction, she takes a breath and checks her phone.

Her heart skips a beat as she notices _1 New Notification._ But no— it’s just a CNN alert.

Barriss deflates.

No new messages from Ahsoka.

No messages explaining why she’d completely bailed.

 _Maybe she’s just late,_ Barriss thinks, then barks a rueful chuckle. It’s been an hour and half; even she can’t honestly believe that. Gritting her teeth, she grabs her backpack, shuts off the light, and accepts the truth: after over a month of “friendship,” Ahsoka realized what Barriss always knew she would eventually: she was better than Barriss, cooler, funnier, prettier— and didn’t have any reason to keep hanging out with her.

Even with chemistry, Barriss had become nearly useless; Ahsoka was such a fast learner that their meetings had quickly morphed into codependent study sessions rather than formal tutoring.  (Barriss tried not to feel disappointed by that. Why should she care that she was no longer critically important to Ahsoka’s life? Why would that bother her at all? It didn’t. Not in the slightest.)

Barriss follows the path back to her dorm. When the skies darken and offer up a shower, she hardly reacts, not even bothering to put up the umbrella she’d brought on the off chance Ahsoka wanted to grab dinner after. Barriss deserves to be cold. Wet. Miserable. That’s what she gets for having hope.

It’s not until she catches a passing glimpse of her reflection in a puddle— bedraggled, defeated, soaked headscarf clinging to her scalp— that it dawns on her that perhaps something bad happened to Ahsoka. Maybe she didn’t come because she _couldn’t_ — Barriss had read every crime statistic for the city. She’s perfectly aware of the possibilities.

The lethargy drains out of her, a new sense of urgency in its place. She has to go, she has to check her room, she has to call security— deep breath. One thing at a time. She’s running now, kicking up a spray of water in her wake, dialing Ahsoka’s number once again and trying not to panic as the cheery voicemail rings out through the tinny speakers. _She’s alright. She’s alright._ _She has to be._

She slaps her key to the fob, bursting through the door as soon as it unlocks. There. At the end of the hallway. Ahsoka’s room, a single. Rare for freshman. But then again, what about Ahsoka wasn’t rare?

Barriss reaches the door in one breath. She tries the handle. Locked. Heart in her throat, she pounds on the door.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally was going to have this be all in one chapter, but I really wanted to get something out tonight for Day 3 so I'll update with the conclusion as soon as I can! Thanks for reading !


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